


Strangelove

by Miss_M



Series: J/B in Depeche Mode Key [9]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Depeche Mode
Genre: Angst, F/M, Pity Sex, Post - A Dance With Dragons, Sexual Fantasy, Smut, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-02
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-14 05:56:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1255408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s different from the time in the sept. Not only because their son’s dead body is not lying right there, and Jaime is not trying to forget the loss of his hand between Cersei’s ivory thighs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strangelove

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics can be found [here](http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/depechemode/strangelove.html). I own nothing.

It’s different from the time in the sept. Not only because their son’s dead body is not lying right there, and Jaime is not trying to forget the loss of his hand between Cersei’s ivory thighs. 

Because this time he keeps his eyes open while he fucks her, and tells himself again and again, _This is pity. This is what pity looks like. This is what pity feels like._

Her green eyes are closed, surrounded by fine lines which were not there before. Deeper lines frame her still-red mouth, runnels of anger and hate and wine giving her an old woman’s jowly look. She will never grow old. The Faith will have its just due, now that Cersei’s trial by combat is over and done with. Qyburn’s monstrosity proved no match for one of the Warrior’s Sons, a man fired by a zeal for absolution, all his sins washed away in one duel to the death. 

Cersei never used to keep her eyes closed before. She would always watch Jaime, urge him on with eyes and mouth and sharp, sweet words, words like honeyed daggers sliding over his skin, more flaying than cutting. She was the one who wanted this. Jaime wonders if she still wants it, if she is even enjoying herself, here, in her dank cell, on moldering straw, a queen refusing her last chance for penance, throwing it in the Faith’s face with his help. 

Jaime is not precisely glad to help. But he still did not say no, unlike that day in the White Sword Tower. He grips Cersei’s hip, wraps his stump around her and lifts her lower body off the pallet of old straw, thrusts harder, making her moan, just a little. She never used to be that scrupulously quiet either, for all that she always urged him to greater caution. 

He changes angle, and she moans louder. Jaime is horribly glad to hear it. 

Jaime will not lie to himself and claim he is only doing this because he has not had a woman since that day in the sept, because he is tired of his hand, because Brienne held fast to her honor, and refused him anything more than some truly unmaidenly kisses and a quick, clumsy, one-handed fumble under her jerkin before she left to pursue her quest. This is Cersei under him, and a part of Jaime, maybe all of him, will never not stir at the thought of her, the sight and feel of her. Especially after she turned her shaven head to him, her face showing the clean, pared-down beauty of the skull, and begged him, actually asked, for the first time in their lives. His maiming, his willfulness, the silver in his beard, all forgotten. Jaime found himself stirring even as his heart and his head told him no, and then told him maybe, and then whispered, _Look at her. There is nothing there._ Cersei has become a hollow creature, not a woman precisely, not anymore, and this is not precisely desire. 

_She’s been fucking Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and probably Moon Boy for all I know…_ The well-worn, scourging words, a constant, burrowing thorn in Jaime’s flesh. He summons them now, to see if they will make him as bitter as they always have done in the past. 

They do, but he keeps fucking Cersei anyway, with no pleasure other than that warming his loins, which is the smallest part of it. There is no relief, no sense of homecoming or closing the book of their joined lives. This is what one gives to a dying woman. Her last wish, and Jaime’s one chance to taste what it’s like to pity someone so much he can go through the motions and feel nothing. Anger, love, lust, all gone. He wonders if Cersei still believes he will be struck dead the moment the headsman finishes her off, if she will be pleased and comforted to think at least his heart will have died with her, for her, long ago.

Brienne appears before him, startling and unbidden as ever, her eyes blue and clear, her mouth twisting with disapproval. Jaime imagines her at the door of Cersei’s cell, filling the doorframe, observing him, and his heart clenches in his chest so painfully he gasps. 

Cersei coos, thinking he is enjoying this, he is nearing the brink. They have taken everything from her, position, name, power, hair, yet still she thinks she can inspire pleasure as well as base desire in him. 

Jaime closes his eyes, unable to stand the sight of her anymore. Behind his eyelids, he sees Brienne, lit up by golden sunlight, sword on her hip, her ruined cheek and disappointed eyes. She lied to him once, and did it very badly before the truth came tearing out of her like a songbird from a snare, Brienne’s trust in Jaime the only thing almost as steadfast as her honor.

He will have to tell her when he sees her, and he will, he refuses to believe the wench might die while she is apart from him. She will hate him, no doubt, her last fond dreams of knighthood and honor shattered by him. How could they not be, when Jaime has done little but break and reshape her since the night they met in Riverrun’s dungeon? 

What will Brienne do? Weep? Curse him with words far worse and more lethal than ‘kingslayer’ and ‘oathbreaker’? Let him touch her regardless, maybe learn from him about lying with someone for anger and revenge rather than fondness? Find and fuck some squire tired of tugging on himself or some drunken hedge knight to teach Jaime a lesson, give him back the pain he will give to her? 

No. Jaime sees the tears pouring down the wench’s red cheeks, hears her words of recrimination and disappointment. She will make him feel her pain less because he caused it in her than because he behaved worse than he should have done. Ever the principled wench. Jaime feels battered by the words pouring out of her, only what he deserves, but eventually her words peter out, and he finds her hands and cheeks are still hot with the fight, but she is as warm and gentle as ever. 

Jaime breathes deeply, slows his thrusts, ignoring the protesting noises made by the woman under him, and thinks of Brienne teaching him things he really should be teaching her. Thinks of her mouth, her crooked teeth under his tongue, her lips plump and willing, the sounds she made when Jaime discovered, to his delight, what a quick study Brienne is, how quickly she kissed him back, and how well. How perfectly her right breast fit in his hand, which he had just enough time to learn before she pushed him away the night before her departure for the Vale, intent on her honor yet flushed and moist-eyed with want. Jaime thinks of kissing her face, every inch of it, broken, scarred or whole, and rolls his hips. Hears Brienne sigh before her pain is replaced by strong muscles gripping him, his shy, eager wench learning to writhe and arch under him. 

Jaime does not hear Cersei’s tiny grunt of impatience and anger as he strokes, strokes, slow and strong and deep, Brienne’s name on his bitten lips, Brienne’s name coming alive on his strangled breath. He pulls out and spills on the straw, not wanting to plant a bastard in her belly. He’s done her enough harm already, and he suspects not even Brienne would be able to carry on a quest while big with child. 

Jaime opens his eyes and takes in Cersei’s expression, nearly laughs at the thought that thus were the limits of unbelief reached in the cells above the Great Sept. He thinks of Kettleblack, and Lancel, and Moon Boy, and every page, potboy, and fishmonger who may have had her, how they all must have felt when Cersei opened her legs for them, as though they were fucking the Maiden herself. Tyrion’s words loosen like a noose around a reprieved prisoner’s neck as Jaime sees, clear as Midsummer on his sister’s face, that she has never before been fucked while her bedmate thought of another ( _Jaime certainly never did_ ). The realization is sweeter and sharper than pity, than any triumph, barbed with poisonous thorns. It tears at Jaime’s heart and brings a smile to his face. He laces himself up and leaves without prolonging their goodbyes, while Cersei lies unmoving, her face blank of rage and pride, leeched of all beauty, a mere shell, her soul already gone though her head is still attached to the rest of her, her legs splayed over the mess on the straw, the very picture of whoredom. 

He knows he must make haste and leave King’s Landing. The Faith will be coming for him just as soon as it has finished with Cersei. Strangely, the prospect of leaving ( _of her death_ ) fills him with a mild sense of anticipation, like any long journey, but holds out no prospect of skin-tearing sorrow. 

He walks out of the Great Sept, a free man still, his white cloak just a little soiled along the edge, where it dragged in the filth on the cell floor. Jaime drags his sins behind him like rocks tied to his ankles, yet the gaze of Blessed Baelor on his plinth has no more power to fill him with shame than it ever did. The only shame Jaime feels, his only fear, comes from what he will see in Brienne’s eyes when he tells her, and tell her he must. He never could lie to the wench, and he does not intend to start now. 

Jaime knows he isn’t worthy of Brienne, suspects the man who could live up to the wench’s example and expectations may never be born. Jaime can no more lie to her than he can shuck his skin and become other than what he is. He may drown in her anger or be washed ashore, sated and breathless in her arms. Whatever the outcome, he only has one choice where Brienne is concerned. She _is_ the choice. His life and whatever soiled, tattered remnants of honor he has left are hers. The certainty settles around Jaime’s shoulders, soft and heavy as a cloak of a color he could wear with true pride.


End file.
